Researching possible South Africa trip ; more work on Cburg house 2 ; visit with Labashi's brother

(posted from home)
(This post covers 18 – 31 May, 2011)


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Tuesday, 31 May -

Today the temperature was 94 degrees and I had lawn work to do. I had a regular checkup appointment with the dentist and learned the two chips I've accumulated over the last few months will require two new caps.
I also made calls about immunizations for our proposed trip. If we were to get the entire set, they would cost us something like $1200 (yikes!!!) That kind of number tests our resolve. With the flights, vehicle rentals, park camping fees of up to $50 per person per night, etc, this is adding up quickly and is looking less and less possible. On the other hand, it's Africa!
That evening we watched 'Tsotsi', another South Africa story.
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Monday, 30 May -

Today we read through the response from the South African company on our enquiry. That led to a long research session on whether or not our credit cards' car-rental benefits could save us some money on collision-damage waiver insurance. After very frustrating long calls with Mastercard and Visa I learned that our cards' features don't apply to renting a pickup truck or any of the 4x4 vehicles or SUVs rented by the South African company (Land Rovers, LandCruisers, Fortuners, etc). So much for that!
That afternoon I rode the motorcycle to Rocky Ridge for a walk. This one took an hour and 47 minutes.


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Sunday, 29 May -

We spent the morning with Labashi's brother and his wife, then took them to brunch at the Accomac Inn. We had a great time with them and very long brunch there on the porch.
Our friends left for DC after brunch and we returned home. I then rode the motorcycle down to Rocky Ridge County Park and walked for 1:36.


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Saturday, 28 May -

Today we drove to Mechanicsburg to visit Labashi's parents and her oldest brother and his wife who had driven up from DC to visit. We went to supper at Theo's and then at home we watched 'Casino Jack' with Kevin Spacey.

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Friday, 27 May-

This morning I sent off an enquiry to a South Africa 4x4 rental company (Bushlore) which features 4x4s with rooftop tents for 'self-drive safaris'. We then spent a few hours cleaning the house for visitors coming this weekend. I also finished up the air conditioner installations and, since I had the ladder out, cleaned our the rain-gutter jams.
That afternoon I walked at Pinchot for an 75 minutes. It's the Memorial Day weekend and the campground was rapidly filling up. That evening we watched the first disk of Entourage's last season available on disk.

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Thursday, 26 May-

This morning I rode the F650GS up to Harrisburg to pick up my replacement glasses. I've been very disappointed in my latest lenses and had them replaced on warranty. We'll see how the new ones do. These don't have the anti-reflective coating and I'm hoping they'll be easier to clean.
On the way home I stopped at Pinchot State Park to walk for an hour. It was a very hot and humid day so an hour was plenty.
Back home we decided it's time to install the air conditioners. We normally wait until at least the Fourth of July to install our two airconditioners (and most years install only one of them) but we have very hot weather (around 95 degrees) coming soon so why wait?
That evening we watched 'Red Dust' with Hillary Swank, a South Africa movie.... and a good one!

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Wednesday, 25 May-

Home-- I spent the morning catching up my work log, a handwritten log book I keep of the work we've done on the houses. That afternoon I took the Concours in to Starbucks and then went to Best Buy to look for a better Netflix Instant alternative. I looked at Roku and Sony and Logitech solutions and now need to do some research on the web.

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Tuesday, 24 May -

Today I finished up the vent installations, then fixed two 4x4-sized holes in the block foundation using hydraulic cement and chunks of old concrete. These holes had apparently been used in construction of the front porch but I don't quite understand how. Maypo had demolished the porch and perhaps had removed 4x4s from the holes in that process. I used the hydraulic cement left over from our patching work in the basement. I also again planed doors. I'm amazed how they've expanded in the warm, humid weather.
That afternoon Labashi caulked the bathtub and surround and I mounted the tub hardware so we can begin using it for our showers. We've been taking showers at Maypo's house and that's disruptive so we really should be taking advantage of this alternative.
Late in the day we drove home.

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Monday, 23 May-

This morning I covered the front and rear door brickmold trim with aluminum cladding and finished replacing the last soffit panel and cutouts for the vents. We also painted the fascia and Labashi caulked the soffit joints. We had supper at Quiznos, then watched two movies in the van-- 'Black Swan' and 'How Do You Know'. 'Black Swan' was just okay and 'How Do You Know' was awful--- surely a contender for a Razzie.

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Sunday, 22 May -

We continued the outside work on the Chambersburg house's soffit panels. We installed nice little louvered-and-screen aluminum vents in the panels. I also struggled with a light fixture above the back door for WAY too long. The electrical box had been installed poorly and stuck down a good half-inch below the soffit. That was because the back of the box interfered with a rafter. I found an old-construction shallow-depth box at Lowes which took care of that problem but then had extended difficulties mounting the motion-detector floodlight fixture to it. The 'universal mount' was a miserable piece of engineering which defied assembly with the non-standard design of the fixture. I'm guessing the fixture had originally had a custom mount which would have been much easier. Eventually I prevailed but the fifteen-minute job took me more than two hours.
We worked late then drove out to Ciao Bella near Caledonia for supper.

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Saturday, 21 May -

Labashi and I drove to Chambersburg today and resumed work on House 2. Maypo and I spent the day replacing soffit panels and Labashi painted them. We also planed the badly-weathered front door sill and Labashi then painted it. That evening Maypo joined us for supper at Norland Pub.


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Friday, 20 May -

We finally had a bit of a break with the rains but I had to mow wet grass just to be able to leave for a few days and not return to an impossible-to-mow lawn! We also continued our web research of the South Africa trip. I've also ordered a series of Netflix films about South Africa.


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Thursday, 19 May-

We still have daily rains at this point and the grass is going crazy! We spent the day on the web looking at different aspects of the possible South Africa trip.

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Wednesday, 18 May-

Today is yet another rainy day here at home. I spent most of the day on the web, working on our possible South Africa trip. We're looking for what amounts to renting a vehicle something like Mocha Joe.


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Front-tooth endless problems ; House 2 kitchen and living room work plus rim-joist damage repair

(posted from home)
(This post covers 1 – 17 May, 2011)

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Tuesday, 17 May-

What a crappy day. It rained much of the night and almost all day. I did a little office work (paying bills, checking on insurance stuff, etc) but spent most of the day on the web. Labashi spent most of the day researching a possible trip to South Africa (if we can find the right deal) and I spent a few hours catching up and posting the blog.
That evening we finished up the 'Entourage' disk and also watched a 'Good Wife' episode.

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Monday, 16 May-

This morning I picked up the supplies to run a separate 'home run' circuit for the new outlet above the kitchen counter from our home-repair stock. But a new circuit just seemed wasteful and I wasn't looking forward to opening up the power panel. So I went back to the kitchen and reviewed the circuit layout. I pulled the outlet covers to look for the end-of-string outlet and realized I had a better answer. I could tap in to the existing circuit by connecting into its wires running through the attic. And that even turned out to be easy. And on top of that, it meant the existing GFCI outlet was first-in-chain to the new outlet and I could return the GFCI outlet I had bought for the new home-run circuit. I spent the rest of the morning running the cables and connecting things up, then testing that all the kitchen outlets worked as they should with the GFCI function.
That afternoon we switched gears entirely. We changed into our Sunday-best and attended the funeral of a long, LONG time friend. This friend had a connection to both Labashi and I and our parents and families. What an amazing, amazing woman.
That evening we returned to the house to lock things up and then drove home. We watched three episodes of 'Entourage' S6.

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Sunday, 15 May -

Today Labashi painted the living room walls while I cut in a new receptacle above the kitchen countertop. After creating the hole for the receptacle and finding a utility box which would work with the extra-thick (1-inch) plastered wall, I had problems running the cable. I had neglected to notice that the bottom of the cavity was filled by a furnace duct. That forced me to drill through the nearby stud and then drill up from the basement into the cavity. Unfortunately I kept hitting nails, though they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Once I had a hole we had to use a cable-fishing rod to get the cable run completed. But even then I wasn't happy-- it meant I'd have that outlet on a different circuit than the others. I decided to talk to electrical-expert Maypo about it this evening and turned my attention to cleaning and patching the kitchen wall and painting the various wood blocks used for mounting stuff on the basement walls.

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Saturday, 14 May-

We drove to Chambersburg this morning, this time via Mechanicsburg's Carpet Mart. We were looking for alternatives for the vinyl sheet flooring but didn't make out well. Oddly, the salesperson told us they don't know what the patterns or product lines are of their remnants. They buy 'remnant packs' from manufacturers and don't get that info so it's just a shot in the dark as to the quality of the remnants. Makes you wonder what the SKU codes were on the remnant tags though, doesn't it?
Labashi painted the living room ceiling while I cut out some remaining termite damage from one of the joists in the basement and scarfed-in a 2 x 4 to replace the compromised section. Structurally, the joist is sistered by a new joist beside it.
I then spent the rest of the afternoon installing a new 4 x 4 post at the bottom of the basement stairs so we can close in the stairs.

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Friday, 13 May-

My main job today was to get the mowing done and I had a great day for it-- overcast and cool.
I cranked it out pretty handily in two one-hour sessions.
We're headed to Chambersburg tomorrow so I also spent time planning our work for the weekend.

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Thursday, 12 May-

This morning I rode the GS up to Harrisburg to drop off my glasses for replacement lenses. Late in the day Labashi and I visited her parents at the retirement village in Mechanicsburg and had supper with them.
That evening we watched 'Wit', a Mike Nichols-directed film with Emma Thompson. It's a very powerful story of a woman dying of ovarian cancer. Emma is astounding in this role.

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Wednesday, 11 May-

Labashi spent much of today at home making calls looking for vinyl sheet flooring for House 2. She ALMOST hit a home run with her calls. We were looking for pattern UL-164 and she found a very cheap piece of UL-163 that would have fit. The pattern's the same but the color is a bit too dark for our purpose. Her calls did tell us, though, that we're getting a really good price at Sam's. Now if we can just get the flooring! They make their big buy in June each year and that's not far off so we may yet be able to get it. We should do the flooring as one of the last items anyway and there's plenty of work to keep us busy into July on this house.
I spent yet another afternoon at the dentist and did manage to get some motorcycle riding in. I took the Concours down to York this morning looking for a replacement helmet and took the GS to the dentist's office in the afternoon.
That evening we re-watched 'Out of Africa' with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford since we're getting interested in taking a trip to Africa. Good movie. I also learned quite a bit more about both Karen Blixen (Streep) and Denys Finch Hatton (played by Redford). In the intervening years I read 'West with the Night' by Beryl Markham and was surprised to learn that she was not only a contemporary, she and Finch Hatton were reportedly lovers.


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Tuesday, 10 May

Today Maypo had to go back to his regular job. He's working a demanding full-time job yet worked through the weekend and took yesterday off to work on the house with us.
This morning Orat and I replaced the bottom two rows of aluminum siding with new-old stock that my Dad and, later, Maypo had kept around for just such a use. The job went well though we did have a minor panic when we couldn't find the tar-paper we needed for under the siding. The key to getting the siding to zip back up was getting the starter-strip placed just right so the zipper-tool could work its magic. Orat did a magnificent job... nary a dent or mark and the siding is a good fit.
The siding job took up most of the morning and Orat was due to head home today. We spent the afternoon doing plumbing work in the basement. We had had one very small bad section of copper pipe but had decided pipes around the water heater and up to the bathroom looked hideous. They had been formed from soft-copper roll-pipe (as opposed to straight lengths) and a nightmare of criss-crossed pipes filled the area. They weren't leaking but looked amateurishly-done.
On one of my trips to Lowes I picked up six ten-foot sections of pipe and the requisite ells and connectors. By 1700 we had a new look. The web of pipes was gone and an orderly (and shiny!), well-planned set of pipes was in place.
That evening we had a super-duper spaghetti dinner at Maypo's house before Orat headed back up I-81 and I-15 for New York and Labashi and I headed for York Haven.

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Monday, 9 May -

This morning I finished up chiseling out the bad section of subfloor partially under the sill plate to make room for a rim joist. I went to Lowes and bought a fourteen foot 2 x 10 and a twelve foot 2 x 8 for the job. We cut down the 2 x 12 to act as both rim joist and to fill in the area of subfloor we had removed to the right of the door. To the left of the door the wood was fine so we merely installed the 2 x 8 there.
Late in the day Maypo and Orat installed the formed aluminum I had picked up from the fabricator on the gable-end trim. Orat also installed a cone of rubber roofing material over the plumbing system's vent pipe to stop a small leak. We then had a pizza party at Maypo's that evening.

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Sunday, 8 May -

Today Labashi painted in the bath while Maypo and Orat and I (mostly them!) installed kitchen cabinets and the countertop. We had come up a cabinet short somehow so I made yet another trip to Lowe's, this time in Shippensburg, to get a small bridge cabinet for above the refrigerator's new location.
While the guys worked I also caulked the new windows Maypo had installed. While outside caulking I saw my first termite swarm. The dang little things were launching from the front door sill! Apparently Maypo had disturbed them by demolishing the front porch and now, with the right weather conditions, they were abandoning the nest. I rushed down to our storage garage trying to find termite spray but then had to go out to Lowe's once again for it. While I was there Orat called and said the countertop we had bought had a bow in it so I bought another-- the straightest in the bunch.
By the time I got back tot he house the termites were all gone. I dug around the area where just an hour before there had been hundreds, if not thousands, and there were none.
The termite incident really struck home. We switched from inside work to outside work. We unzipped the bottom three rows of aluminum siding and removed and marked the bottom two. We then began the tedious work of removing the termite-damaged rim joist, a three-foot section of sill, and about 15 feet of subfloor edge. Fortunately the damage to the subfloor was only about an inch deep so we were able to use my Zipsaw to flush-cut most of it out.
That evening we had a Mother's Day celebration at Maypo's house.

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Saturday, 7 May -

This morning I had to make yet another trip to Lowes while Maypo installed the last two of the replacement windows and Labashi worked on wall and ceiling patches. Orat arrived just before noon so we hit the local McDonalds before digging in to the work. The three of us tore out the kitchen floor and replaced it with a new layer of OSB underlayment by the end of the day.
We all went to supper at Tito's Tacos that evening and then sat around half-asleep on Maypo's giant comfort-chair reclinables.

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Friday, 6 May -

This morning we returned to Sam's Flooring to buy the sheet vinyl in the pattern and color we liked. Unfortunately, they didn't have a big enough piece in stock for the kitchen and ordering custom would more than double the price. Now what? We left with another sample but I don't think either of us really liked it.
We then drove to the aluminum fabricator (Shadle's) to order three pieces of formed aluminum to cover an exposed section of trim over the gable end. There had been a long section which had apparently blown off in some long-forgotten wind storm.
We continued on to Lowes and bought more materials for the weekend. Back at the house I worked on the front door so it would close properly and then we demolished the old set of upper cabinets to make way for the new ones we had just bought.
That evening we cleaned and patched the walls where the new cabinets will go.

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Thursday, 5 May -

This morning we returned to Chambersburg to continue work on House 2. On the way we stopped at the Carlisle Home Depot to check out the kitchen cabinets and countertops. My impression was the Lowe's cabinets are a bit better built. The reinforcement in the corners of the sink-base are glued-in corner struts while the HD cabinets had small stapled-in plastic brackets. And the HD sink cabinets had a space between the doors rather than a vertical post. Also, we realized we'd have a better chance of coming up with a complete set of cabinets from Lowe's since there are more and closer Lowes stores to Chambersburg.
We then drove to the house and took a final set of detailed measurements to be sure the design would fit. We then drove to Sam's Flooring to get floor samples and underlayment for both the kitchen and bath.
We then went to the Chambersburg, Shippensburg, and Carlisle Lowes to buy the ten cabinets we needed. We were looking for the finer-grained versions of the cabinets and were doing well until it came to the sink base. We ended up taking a sink base that had a bit of a larger pattern than we wanted on the doors.
We returned to the house and unloaded around 2100--- a long day today.

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Wednesday, 4 May -

Another day, another dentist appointment. I again lost my front-tooth cap last evening so called in to my regular dentist with my sad tale. They very graciously shuffled schedules around and got me in mid-afternoon. I had a different dentist than my regular guy and then was handed off at the end of the day to my regular dentist. The job today was giving me a replacement post and then a temporary cap. It turned out I didn't have to have the cast post recommended by the endodontist. Thank goodness for that. Both dentists said they hadn't done one since dental school! But in this case they had a wider selection of 'stock' posts than the endodontist's office and the largest of them worked fine in the extra-large hole created by removal of the broken post.
Again, the work was painless.
That evening we began watching a new TV series, 'The Good Wife', with Juliana Margulies. We were hooked right from the pilot.

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Tuesday, 3 May -

I had contacted the endodontist's office late in the day yesterday and had been given an appointment about a week away. But my tooth fell out last evening. I called this morning and asked if there had been any cancellations and explained my predicament. Fortunately, there HAD been a cancellation and I was able to get in this afternoon.
I only had an appointment for a consultation so I was surprised when the endodontist gave my tooth a look and then said something like “Ready to get started?”. An hour and a half and $1000 later the post had been removed and a temporary cap put in its place. I had instructions to contact my dentist about having a special 'cast post' made and installed and then the replacement cap made.
My endodontist was a a young woman originally from Nigeria who was both very good and entertaining at the same time. She and the assistant kept up a constant light banner which both kept the mood light but also kept me apprised of how things were going with the procedure.
That evening we watched a curious movie called 'Cloud 9'. It's about an older married woman falling in love with another man and the devastating consequences to her family. Her affair at first seemed harmless enough but soon spiraled out of control-- and at her own doing. I don't know about this one. It was unnecessarily explicit for one thing. And I have mixed feelings about what it means, about whether or not it was a mistake for her to pursue the affair. Maybe I'm just too used to everything wrapping up into a nice little package by the time the end-titles roll.
The endodontist had given me two packages of pain pills for the evening, predicting I'd have a less-than-delightful evening after the nummy-juice wore off but I didn't have any pain at all.

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Monday, 2 May -

Last evening while chatting with our friends I happened to touch one of my front teeth and it moved! This one is a cap so I supposed it was time to go back to get it re-cemented.
My dentist scheduled me in to an emergency appointment slot this morning. It didn't take long to see that this one was going to be trouble. The cap hadn't just come loose ; the post had broken in two. Not good. After staring at it for a long time he gave me the bad news-- he couldn't do anything for me and would have to refer me to an endodontist to have the post removed. He did cement the cap back on but without a post, I don't give it long.
Labashi came with me to the appointment so we could then continue to Lowe's to look for kitchen cabinets for House 2. We also went to the nearby Just Cabinets to look. The latter cabinets are cheaper but I think a pretty big step down in quality and it looks like there are consistency problems in the finishes.

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Sunday, 1 May-

This morning I took my regular Sunday motorcycle ride to the Tollgate Starbucks. That evening our Boulder friends returned to spend the night before catching their flight in the morning. We picked right up where we left off and chatted away the evening.

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